1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to devices useful for stockpiling loose bulk materials, especially agricultural products such as grains and nuts. The immediate invention is particularly directed towards a self-propelled slinger vehicle having aiming capacity for directional discharge and height adjustment for raising and lowering the height of the discharge projection.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Although material throwers using continuous belts and roller guides useful for stockpiling bulk materials are available, self-propelled slingers vehicles which can be steered for aiming and raised and lowered for varying pile height are not available. A search was therefore conducted to ascertain past art. The classes and subclasses examined included: 198/22, 25, 540, 631, 638, 640, 641, 642, and 914. Patents deemed cross-sectional of the art were considered the following;
In a boat loading device shown in U.S. Pat. No. 2,125,088, a belt aligned on rollers for piling bulk materials such as soda ash is shown at the end of a tubular material drop chute attached at the end of a crane-type material conveyer. This belt and roller arrangement without pliable paddles is limited to a short throw and although satisfactory for filling corners from a boom loader positioned above, the device would be inefficient for the long throws required for stockpiling bulk grains and nuts. Issued in July of 1938 to A. D. Sinden, the slinger shown is a pertinent example of developing past art for these devices.
More pertinent to my invention are U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,950,808, and 2,950,809. These two patents were issued almost simultaneously, the first to Gerberich on Aug. 30, 1960 and the second to A. D. Sinden on Aug. 30, 1960. The two devices have marked similarities with both depending on belt movement to throw materials to a stockpile location. The Sinden device is structured as a two-wheeled mobile device with a smaller swivel wheel attached to a handle in a center frontal position for steering and pulling the device manually from place to place.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,195,711 issued to Bogdan et al on July 20, 1965, shows use of pliable paddles on the end of a material loading elevator. The device is a simple rotating axle affixed with pliable paddles between end discs. Without other means, such as a belt arrangement, for controlling the throw of the material, the device would have very limited applications.
Most pertinent to one phase of my invention is the structure of the device of FIG. 5 in the A. D. Sinden U.S. Pat. No. 3,592,394, issued July 13, 1971. From our experiments with these devices, we feel that the Sinden device has the main thruster wheel wrongly positioned in the belt to provide a long and controllable material throw. Using a short pliable paddle with a rigid paddle support my slinger is highly efficient for longer material throws with a much smaller diameter thruster wheel than Sinden is able to use. In FIGS. 1 and 3 of the Sinden illustrations, the material appears to be thrown directly back at the supply hopper. The efficiency of the Sinden device seems somewhat restricted by throwing the materials over the top of the paddle wheel directly over the end of the supply conveyer structure positioned almost immediately in front of the material trajectory path.
In the slinger section of my device, an adjustable opening in the hopper feeds the bulk materials directly onto the belt below the thruster wheel paddles. The paddles do not pass through the mouth of the hopper as is shown in the various embodiments of the Sinden device. My material feeding method increases both the efficiency and the slinger throwing range. Notably in the past art patents examined was the absence of a self-powered hopperslinger combination mounted on road wheels which could be driven around the job site and towed from one use location to another some distance away.